The signature bread of the Philippines is pandesal, but in this recipe, I’m tweaking it a little bit to include the ube flavor. This recipe uses a KitchenAid!
Ingredients:
- 3 cups bread flour
- 2 tsp salt
- ¼ cup sugar (I recommend using coconut sugar)
- 2 tsp instant yeast
- ½ cup ube powder
- 1 ½ cups warm water, 110º-115ºF
- 2 tsp ube extract
- ½ stick of butter
- Bread crumbs (or crush some sweet crackers)
Directions:
- In your KitchenAid mixing bowl, mix together the bread flour, salt, and sugar. Then, add the yeast and the ube powder and mix together all these ingredients using your dough hook attachment. Keep the KitchenAid mixing on low speed.
- Make sure your warm water is between 100º-115ºF, otherwise if it’s too hot it will kill the yeast. Start with 1 cup of this water and slowly add it until the flour has all been picked up. Add 2 tsp of ube extract and mix it up for a few more minutes on low speed. Turn off the mixer and use a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure all the flour has been incorporated.
- Turn the mixer back on and add the half stick of butter in stages so that it can fully incorporate into the dough. After it has mixed in well, check the texture of the dough. If it is a little too hydrated, add just a little more flour and mix it into the dough.
- Set your mixer to speed 4, or medium speed, and knead this dough for about 10-15 minutes. Check your dough after about 8 minutes of continuous kneading to make sure you don’t over-knead the dough (the dough stretches a bit before tearing). Then check it every few minutes after this to check again. Once the dough is done, cover the bowl with a lid to let it rise to double its size for about an hour.
- If you don’t have any bread crumbs, take some sweet crackers and crush them using a pestle until you have about 1 whole cup of bread crumbs. After the ube dough has risen for an hour, poke it to see if it doesn’t spring back. If it doesn’t, it is ready.
- Sprinkle bread crumbs across your work surface, and then roll out the dough into a long, log shape. Coat the ube dough in the bread crumbs, and then cut it into 16-18 even pieces and roll each piece into a bun shape. Next, coat each ube bun in more bread crumbs until they’re covered in them.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and then lay out the rolls onto the baking sheet so that they’re touching. Then, cover the baking sheet to seal in the moisture–I used an unscented trash bag for this since it’s reusable :). Let the rolls rise for about 30 minutes. Afterward, check to see that the rolls are ready–if you poke them, they spring back only halfway.
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Bake the rolls for about 25-30 minutes.
MMM the bread smells so wonderful when it comes out of the oven. And even though some people say to wait 1-2 hours before tearing into bread, I think it’s okay to dig into these freshly-baked ube pandesal rolls. You can treat this like any bread: make some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, have it with your meals, or one of my favorites–dip it in some hot chocolate…YUM!😋